So What is the Solution? - Reader comments at The New York Sun

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Reader comment on:
Inconvenient Truth At School

Submitted by Robert F, Feb 14, 2007 18:13

None of what Wolf is saying is news to me. I'm getting tired of reading articles like this, which describe the problem very well and then have next to nothing to say about a solution. Many of the responses are full of gloom and doom and sneering remarks about "educrats" and little else. The question is, what is to be done? Wolf's article conveniently neglects to mention the biggest flaw in Hirsch's Core Knowledge curriculum; it ends at 8th grade. That isn't going to prepare students for college. Are progressive methods supposed to continue to dominate high school? Hirsch's books also say nothing about remediation. They have sound ideas for doing a better job in the future; they abandon those currently in the system.

The questions raised are obvious. If progressive ideas dominate teacher training, and have led to a successive dimunition of abilities and standards, then there are many out there who need remediation, both students and teachers. Unless we are prepared to simply abandon those people (and many who rail against the very real shortcomings of progressive eduation are quite prepared to do so), we need to create programs to help them. Can anyone suggest a school of education which trains teacher in sound traditional methods? Anyone?

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Other reader comments on this article

Comment	By	Date
None of what Wolf is saying is news to me. I'm getting tired of reading articles like this, which describe...	Robert F	Feb 14, 2007 18:13
It is very difficult to say that the drop in performance was mostly due to a weaker high school education... [MORE]	Rob Rasmussen	Feb 14, 2007 13:55
If you want your race horse to win, you don't feed it fast food and beverages with artificial sugar. instead... [MORE]	Robert M. Stockmann	Feb 11, 2007 01:24
The article illustrates another reason why the United States will soon be another third rate, third world nation. I don't... [MORE]	Howard Lee	Feb 10, 2007 02:21
The reality about our education system is that it is in disrepair. Yes, there is a precipitous decline in test... [MORE]	Maury Leon	Feb 9, 2007 17:55
I am a retired high school mathematics teacher. I spent twenty years at Prospect Heights High School, which is now... [MORE]	David Simonoff	Feb 9, 2007 16:14
I find it astonishing that there is such surprise generated by the findings of Professor Wilson's study. Given such apparent... [MORE]	Terri	Feb 9, 2007 15:46
Unbelievably, no one has ever scientifically tested Maria Montessori's 1912 contention that if kindergartners get sufficient practice printing alphabet letters,... [MORE]	Robert Rose, MD (retired)	Feb 9, 2007 15:31
Our once proud school system here in St. Louis is so rotten, the state is on the verge of taking... [MORE]	Denis Roach	Feb 9, 2007 09:31
I am the superintendent of a school district in South-Central Texas. We have been watching this for years. The pressure... [MORE]	Cathy Booth	Feb 9, 2007 15:04